JOAN CARSON | Returning Winter Residents

photo by paul carson
Double-crested cormorants are returning for the winter.

What do golden-crowned sparrows and double-crested cormorants have in common?

They’re returning winter residents signaling that the migration is in its later stages. Summer visitors that nested in the north are no longer passing through on their way south. They’re gone. Migrants arriving now are birds that consider the Pacific Northwest their southern home. Every day more and more will be showing up in our yards and out on the water.

Now that I can once more manage a daily walk (that is more like an amble) the scene on the water is like food to someone who is starving. I’ve missed watching the action on our little bay even though it can be pretty quiet during the summer months. Fall is the perfect time to get back to those walks. It seems like there is something new to see almost every day.

Double-crested cormorants are our most common cormorant and the one seen throughout the inland waters. In the summer they leave the protected waters to nest in the San Juan Islands and along our coast on offshore rocky islands. Now they are beginning to drift back to the inland areas where they will spend the winter. Many of the birds we’re now seeing are this year’s young. They’re easy to spot because of their pale breasts. Both the juveniles and the adults have easy-to-see orange chins.

Cormorants on the water can sometimes fool you into thinking you’ve spotted a loon but a closer look shows that the bird is riding very low in the water. Its body is almost submerged and its head is tilted upward. They’re great at fishing and not always popular with human anglers.

When their numbers increase in an area it indicates that fish numbers are also increasing. That appears to be the case on our bay. It’s a toss-up to see who will cover one of the large offshore floats — seals or cormorants.

Even before October’s calendar page was turned one lone golden-crowned sparrow was scratching about under the feeders. Illustrating again how songbirds travel after dark, this bird greeted us early in the morning. It wasn’t there the evening before. Several days earlier an adult white-crowned sparrow and some juveniles made an appearance. They weren’t the race that nested in our yard this summer. Instead, they were the subspecies known as Gambel’s white-crown or “gambelii, Gambel’s form. Yes, it can be confusing.

Check the eye stripe on the white-crowned sparrows you see under your feeders. Does the white line running through the eye begin in front of the eye near the bird’s bill or at the eye? The longer stripe running from the bird’s beak and down the side of the head is Gambel’s form.

Fortunately, golden-crowned sparrows are easier to recognize. Their yellow crown is more subdued now that the breeding season is over but you can’t miss the black stripes on either side of the crown. The juveniles can be more tricky and are sometimes confused with juvenile white-crowns. Time with the field guide helps sort out these two sparrows

Like spring, fall is another time of the year when morning surprises under the feeders get the day off to a good start. A walk along the water gets it off to a great start.